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Is Rubber The New Palm Oil?

As the world’s first Sustainable Rubber Platform is launched, Ali Hines of Global Witness asks whether tire companies can make good on their promises.

Palm oil. It’s in our shampoo, our kitchen cleaner and our
chocolate spread. But you probably already knew that, given the growing campaign
around its unsustainability. Palm oil is the third largest agricultural driver
of deforestation on earth, and its expansion is also the biggest threat to the
survival of the world’s remaining orang-utans in their habitats Borneo and
Sumatra. In the last 16 years alone, 100,000 Bornean
orang-utans have been lost and the species is now critically
endangered.[1]

These revelations have sparked action from the grassroots to
the boardroom – with masses mobilising around the issue on social media, and
even UK supermarket Iceland pledging not to include it in own brand products. (The
subject has become so hot that the store recently found itself in the middle of
an advertisement ban, after its Christmas commercial with Greenpeace on palm
oil faced a ban for being “too political”).

But now we could be seeing a new global poster boy for the widespread
deforestation crippling the environment: rubber.

Rubber is in the car and bicycle tires that take us to work;
in our condoms, our mattresses, our sports shoes. Most likely, that rubber
comes from trees in South East Asia – the region responsible for 90% of the
world’s production of the material.[2]

And while small farmers produce most of it, the last decade
has seen swathes of the world’s last remaining forests cleared for
industrial-sized rubber plantations. This destruction is an epic problem for
our climate and our environment.

Global tree cover loss – in large part caused
by agricultural commodities like rubber, beef and soy - hit a
record peak in 2016, with an area the size of New Zealand hacked down in that
year alone.[3] If
we protect and restore forests, the world will be able to mitigate the 18% of carbon
emissions that’s needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate breakdown.[4]
And as lives, homes and communities continue to be destroyed by climate
breakdown, this is not an option we can afford to ignore.

This week sees the launch of a Sustainable Rubber Platform
initiated by the tire industry, which could help tackle the terrible devastation
caused by the sector – but only it if it’s done right. The platform is the
first and only global multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at improving farmers’
livelihoods and addressing environmental and human rights abuses driven by the
rubber industry.

A range of actors are involved including major brand tire
companies and car manufacturers, rubber producers and processors and
international NGOs. Given that its members represent two-thirds of global tire
production, its potential to leverage positive change by helping halt land
rights abuses and deforestation is significant.

The brands which use this rubber the most – and so help fuel
the global demand which is driving
deforestation – are the world’s six biggest tire companies, including
Goodyear, Pirelli, Bridgestone and Michelin. And every single one of them has been
coming under increasing scrutiny in the last few years.

Global Witness was the first to uncover the harms caused by
the rubber industry five years ago - our report exposed rubber
companies in Cambodia and Laos forcibly removing people from their homes
without compensation and logging illegally in protected forests. Violence, harassment
and forced evictions were regularly reported by local communities.

Increasing exposure of the rubber industry’s impact in the
region hasn’t stopped there. Cambodia and the wider Mekong countries have been
targeted for industrial rubber expansion over the past 10-15 years, after countries
like China and Vietnam ran out of land for rubber expansion. This has driven a
land-grabbing crisis, with forest loss in Cambodia accelerating faster than any
other country in the world between 2001 and 2015.[5]
And crucial biodiversity in the region has also been impacted with threatened
species like the Siamese crocodile and Asian elephant pushed further towards
extinction.

Figures show that trees lost in Cambodia correspond with the
ups and downs of the global price of rubber – highlighting the strong link
between the industry fuelling environmental destruction. In total, data
indicates Cambodia has lost around 1.59 million hectares of forest from 2001
through 2014 – an area a little larger than the U.S. state of Connecticut.[6][7]

Global Witness’ exposé caused deep discomfort, and prompted
a promise from tire companies like Michelin and Goodyear that change would
come. But 5 years after our report, abuses within the rubber industry prevail,
and tire titans are now forced to answer difficult questions on possible
violations in their supply chains. Recent
allegations of abuses caused by rubber expansion in Cameroon by
Greenpeace are testament to the ongoing problems in the sector.

This should matter not only to consumers who buy tires, or
use them. Brands like Pirelli and Goodyear – the US company alone has a market
cap of over six billion dollars according to Forbes[8]
- have grown to global power without ever really proving they are getting
rubber from truly sustainable sources. They sponsor our football games and racing
car industry, and dominate our skies with their iconic blimps. They form a
global and ubiquitous industry.

It is crucial that they pay as much attention to their
supply chains as they do their PR.

Companies need to be transparent about abuses they’ve
identified in their supply chains, and be held accountable by the platform to
clean up any violations, with a strict and clear timeline. And any companies
that don’t comply to the rules of the platform should ensure that abuses are
redressed and if necessary, have their membership revoked. It’s up to the tire
companies, these huge titans of industry which yield extraordinary power, to
create real action – and not greenwash those driving an unsustainable and
damaging rubber trade.